Straight Trendline Drawing

[jmflukeiii]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this has been requested or if its already a feature (I can't seem to find it), but I think it could be a valuable addition. I used to use Qcharts and it was the only charting software I've used that had this function so far. What you could do is when drawing a trendline, you could hold down shift and it would automatically draw the trendline perfectly horizontal, or perfectly vertical (depending on the way in which you drag the mouse away from the start of the line) without having to try to line it up. Now I know you could just draw a horizontal line with that feature, but for times when I don't want a full horizontal line, its frustrating to try to draw a perfectly straight horizontal trendline. I do this all trading session long to draw intra-range double tops, bottoms, or swings.

If this is a feature already I apologize and hopefully someone can tell me how to do it. Otherwise, I think it would be an excellent addition to the next update.

Thank you

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hi jmflukeiii,

Thanks for your post.

This is a great suggestion! I'll forward this on to our development team for further consideration. Thanks for your feedback!

[anachronist]

I think a better suggestion would be to improve the snap mode.

Currently there are three snap modes, and one of them is broken.

The 'Bar' snap mode forces your draw objects to be aligned on bar columns. This is useful for drawing perfectly vertical lines.

The 'Price' snap mode forces your draw objects to be aligned on price tick increments. This is useful for drawing perfectly horizontal lines.

The 'Bar and Price' snap mode is useless. One would expect it to cause draw objects to snap to grid locations defined by bar columns and tick increments. But no, for some bizarre reason it causes objects to snap only to the open, high, low, and close values of price bars. How is that useful? Give me a snap grid, please.

-A

[jmflukeiii]

That's a fine suggestion too, but not related to this suggestion.

I don't care what my trend lines are snapping to, I just want to be able to draw them horizontally without having to line it all up, so I can do it quickly.

[anachronist]

Well, if you select "snap to price" in the drawing tools menu, you can easily and quickly draw horizontal lines because you can more easily make both endpoints be exactly the same price level. That's what I do now. Try it. It isn't exactly what you suggested, but it does greatly aid in drawing perfectly horizontal lines.
-A

[jmflukeiii]

Yeah, you're right. That is a little better and I don't mean to sound lazy, but the precision isn't quite like I was talking about. We'll see...it was a great feature of QCharts and that's the only charting i've ever used with that feature, not sure why more haven't used it. It seems like a simple thing to add.

[bowlesj3]

I agree, I have used two charting programs that use the ctrl key to force a trend line horizontal or vertical. This is very useful for making notes about levels being close but not the same. So it basically boils down to people having to spend extra seconds or minutes to get what they want and it adds up over time.

[Alfred]

What is the tracking number for this suggestion...??

A good suggestion...
What is the tracking number...??

[NinjaTrader_RileyS]

Hello everyone, thank you all for posting your feed back!

The tracking number ID for trend channel's lines to become horizontal or vertical when pressing a key, such as Shift (or another key) is SFT-2546.

I have two votes for it currently for (jmflukeiii and I believe anachronist), and if I missed a vote, please leave another comment and I'll be sure to add it.

[eDanny]

Voting yes

[NinjaTrader_RileyS]

Hello eDanny, thank you for the feedback.

I have added your vote!

[Alfred]

.....A possible option for now....

A yes vote on this suggestion also...

One thing I fairly often do, is use the rectangle draw tool to get perfectly drawn horizontal and vertical lines fairly quickly...a bit of fussing sometimes to get the width right...but workable....example below.....

..............

[RonnyKeller]

add my vote, please

[NinjaTrader_RileyS]

Hello all, votes have been added.

Thank you everyone for your feedback!

[RonnyKeller]

Reality strikes again, quite sobering. It was only now when I figured that this thread started in early 2012. Seems to be quite a long shot with those votes...
I believe to remember that at least one of my former charting software had that feature as well, just not sure if it was Trade Station, MetaStock, eSignal or TradeMaven